Wildly Curious
Wildly Curious is a comedy podcast where science, nature, and curiosity collide. Hosted by Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole, two wildlife experts with a combined 25+ years of conservation education experience, the show dives into wild animal behaviors, unexpected scientific discoveries, and bizarre natural phenomena. With a knack for breaking down complex topics into fun and digestible insights, Katy and Laura make science accessible for all—while still offering fresh perspectives for seasoned science enthusiasts. Each episode blends humor with real-world science, taking listeners on an engaging journey filled with quirky facts and surprising revelations. Whether you're a curious beginner or a lifelong science lover, this podcast offers a perfect mix of laughs, learning, and the unexpected wonders of the natural world.
Episodes
Subscribe if you love science, chaos, and being mildly afraid of your backyard. 🐝
In this Swarms Minisode, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole uncover facts around the infamous “killer bees”—a.k.a. Africanized honeybees. Spoiler: they don’t look scary, but they’ll chase you, sting in overwhelming numbers, and sometimes even wait above water for you to come up for air.
But is the fear justified?
🐝 What makes Africanized h...
Ever wonder how birds, eels, whales, or even bugs find their way without a GPS? In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole uncover the jaw-dropping science behind animal navigation.
From locusts using sky maps and magnetic fields, to eels migrating thousands of miles to a secret oceanic birthplace no one’s ever seen (seriously), and birds that may be using quantum mechanics to see the Earth’s ...
Subscribe if you love science, chaos, and bugs that are way too confident.
In this Swarms Minisode, Katy dives into the desert locust, a grasshopper that transforms—literally—into one of the most devastating swarm creatures on Earth.
🦗 What causes a peaceful insect to go full apocalypse mode?
🌾 How do they morph from shy loners to yellow, muscle-bound sky-hulks?
🌪 What triggers a swarm so massive it consume...
Subscribe and brace yourself—because this week, the swarm has teeth. 🦈
In this second episode of our Swarms Minisode Series, Laura and Katy dive into a lesser-known swarm behavior: shark aggregations. From 1,400 basking sharks off New England to over 15,000 spinning sharks off the Florida coast, this episode explores the science (and chaos) behind why some of the ocean’s most feared predators travel in giant, synchron...
Subscribe and let your nose lead the way. This episode stinks—in the best way possible.
In this surprisingly deep dive into all things scent, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole explore how your sense of smell works, why it’s wildly underappreciated, and what makes certain smells feel amazing (or like a chemical attack).
🧠 How does smell connect to memory and emotion?
🦨 What makes skunk spray so powerful—and imposs...
Subscribe and unleash your inner science goblin. It’s time for Swarms.
In the kickoff to our Swarms Minisodes, Katy and Laura dive into one of nature’s most mesmerizing spectacles: the murmuration of starlings. These jaw-dropping bird formations swirl through the sky like smoke or liquid—but behind the beauty is a stunning system of rules, physics, and evolutionary strategy.
🐦 What exactly is a murmuration—and why do s...
Subscribe and let your inner science goblin move into its own weird little ecosystem. 🦠
In the Season 12 kickoff of Wildly Curious, Katy and Laura reveal the bizarre—but very real—ecosystems thriving inside your house. From the Amazon rainforest of your belly button to the bug-filled biome behind your fridge, your home is alive in more ways than you think.
🦠 Why scientists swabbed hundreds of belly buttons to study ba...
Subscribe and let your brain go on a weekly field trip. No permission slip required.
In this Volcano Minisode, Laura and Katy dive into the dramatic, deadly, and never-quite-dormant history of Mount Vesuvius, one of the most iconic volcanoes on Earth. From burying Pompeii in ash and pyroclastic waves to raining debris across the Mediterranean during WWII, Vesuvius has earned its title as the angriest volcano in history...
In this Volcano Minisode, Katy introduces one of the most extreme animals on Earth: the scaly-foot gastropod, a deep-sea snail that literally builds metal armor from volcanic hydrothermal vents. Found over a mile below the ocean’s surface, this snail survives crushing pressure, toxic heat, and total darkness—all thanks to a symbiotic relationship with bacteria and its one-of-a-kind iron shell.
🧪 How does a snail use v...
Subscribe and unleash your inner science goblin. We see you. We respect it.
In this third Volcano Minisode, Katy digs into one of the coolest things a volcano has ever made: obsidian—a rock so sharp it's been shaping human history for 30,000 years and is still used in modern surgery. 🔪🖤
🌋 What exactly is obsidian and how is it formed?
⚡ How can lava turn into volcanic glass in a flash?
🩺 Why are obsid...
In this second Volcano Minisode, Laura dives deep (literally) into one of Antarctica’s strangest secrets: how volcanic heat has carved out entire networks of hidden ice caves—warm, alien worlds tucked under the frozen surface. 🧊🔥
🌋 Why does Antarctica have 18 volcanoes?
🌡 How can you go from -30°F outside to 70°F inside a cave?
🧬 What strange DNA have scientists discovered in these hidden spaces?
🚪...
In the first Volcano Minisode of our season break, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole uncover one of the wildest stories you've probably never heard: how an active volcano in Mexico accidentally buried—and preserved—the world’s largest pyramid. Yes, really.
🌋 What is Popocatépetl, and why is it still puffing smoke?
🏛 How did the Great Pyramid of Cholula disappear beneath volcanic ash?
📜 What ancient secrets were...
Subscribe and unleash your inner science goblin. We see you. We respect it.
In this Season 11 finale of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole blow the lid off volcanoes—literally and figuratively. From earth-shaking eruptions and blue lava to the creation of entirely new islands, this episode dives into the molten madness of how volcanoes destroy, preserve, and even give life.
🌋 What exactly is a volcano?
In this out-of-this-world episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole tell the incredible—and deeply emotional—story of Ham the Chimp, the first hominid to survive spaceflight.
🧠 How was Ham trained to perform tasks during a rocket launch?
🚀 What made his 1961 mission so important to Project Mercury?
💔 And what did it cost to send an intelligent animal into space?
Ham wasn’t just a passenge...
In this out-of-this-world episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole unravel the story of two unexpected astronauts: Anita and Arabella, the garden spiders launched aboard Skylab 3 in 1973.
🕸️ Can spiders spin webs in zero gravity?
🕷️ How do they adapt without gravity to guide them?
🛰️ What can eight-legged astronauts teach us about behavior and resilience in space?
Anita and Arabella were...
Why do we sleep? What’s going on in our brains while we dream about flying bagels and dolphin taxis? In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole stay up late to explore the science of sleep, REM cycles, lucid dreaming, and why getting less than 5 hours can mess with your memory, mood, and metabolism.
🧠 From brain waves and neurotransmitters to memory formation and emotional resets
😴 The ...
Before astronauts, there were monkeynauts. In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole dive into the bizarre and often tragic history of the first primates sent to space—Albert I, II, III, and IV.
The U.S. was determined to test the limits of space travel, and what better way than by strapping a rhesus macaque to a rocket? Unfortunately for the Alberts, early spaceflight engineering wasn’t exac...
From sky-high lightning bolts that span hundreds of miles to walls of sand swallowing cities whole, extreme weather is wild—and sometimes, just plain weird. 🌩️💨 In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy and Laura break down some of nature’s most shocking meteorological events, including lightning that’s hotter than the sun, haboobs that turn day into night, and actual raining animals (yes, really).
But that’s not all! ...
Frogs. In. Space. Yep, you read that right! In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole take you on a hilarious and mind-blowing journey into the weirdest space experiment you’ve probably never heard of—the Orbiting Frog Otolith mission.
Back in the 1970s, NASA decided that launching two bullfrogs into orbit was a great idea. Why? To study how weightlessness affects the inner ear and balance. B...
Could dinosaurs be the next great delivery workers, pest control experts, or even search-and-rescue heroes? In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole take a deep dive into the wild world of dinosaur training—imagining what it would take to turn prehistoric creatures into modern-day workers. From speedy compies delivering packages through city streets to armored Borealopelta stopping high-spe...
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